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Tag: The Satanic Verses

  • Andrew Wylie: Salman Rushdie has lost sight in one eye

    Author Salman Rushdie lost vision in one eye and uses one hand as a result of his stabbing in New York in August as reported by his agency.

    “He has about 15 more wounds in his chest,” Andrew Wylie, a New York-based agent, also told Spain’s El País newspaper. “It was a brutal attack.“

    Mr Wylie said he could not disclose the novelist’s whereabouts. The assault occurred at an event in New York state.

    Mr Rushdie has long faced death threats for his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses.

    Some Muslims regard the book as blasphemous. The man charged over the attack, US-born Hadi Matar, 24, has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder.

    “He’s lost the sight of one eye,” Mr Wylie said in his interview with El País. “He had three serious wounds in his neck. One hand is incapacitated because the nerves in his arm were cut.”

    Asked if the author was still in hospital, Mr Wylie replied: “I can’t give any information about his whereabouts. He’s going to live… That’s the more important thing.”

    The attack took place at the Chautauqua Institution in New York State on 12 August. Mr Rushdie was about to give a speech about how the US has served as a haven for writers.

    The novelist was forced into hiding for nearly 10 years after The Satanic Verses was published. Many Muslims reacted with fury to it, arguing that the portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad insulted their faith.

    Sir Salman Rushdie pictured onstage
    IMAGE SOURCE, REUTERS

    He faced death threats and the then-Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa – or decree – calling for Mr Rushdie’s assassination, placing a $3m (£2.5m) bounty on the author’s head.

    The fatwa remains active, and although Iran’s government has distanced itself from Mr Khomeini’s decree, a quasi-official Iranian religious foundation added a further $500,000 to the reward in 2012.

    Mr Wylie told El País that he had discussed such threats with Mr Rushdie over the years. “The principal danger that he faced so many years after the fatwa was imposed is from a random person coming out of nowhere and attacking.

    “So you can’t protect against that, because it’s totally unexpected and illogical. It was like John Lennon’s murder.”

    Mr Rushdie was born in India in 1947. He was sent to boarding school in England before studying at the University of Cambridge. In 2007, he was knighted for services to literature.

    There has been an outpouring of support for him, with the attack widely condemned as an assault on freedom of expression.

  • Opinion: I saw the terrifying attack on Salman Rushdie, a man who lives with danger and chooses to thrive

    Friday, August 12, 10:40 a.m. I park my bike in a gravel patch near the Chautauqua Amphitheater, wedging a rock beneath the kickstand so it will not fall. The woman who checks my ticket at the gate is accompanied today by a state trooper and a police dog — not usual for this rural arts community, but warranted: today’s speaker, Salman Rushdie, has lived under threat since his book, “The Satanic Verses,” was published over three decades ago. I zigzag my way down steep stairs to the floor, noticing another trooper standing guard.

     

    Minutes later, Rushdie and Henry Reese walk onstage, set to discuss the US as an asylum for writers and other artists in exile as part of the Chautauqua Lecture Series. The audience rises, clapping.
    I realize Rushdie will be seated with his back to me, so I move to get a better view, starting down the middle aisle to an empty seat in the third row just as the two take their seats.
    Before I take mine, however, a man leaps onstage, hate on two feet, storming Rushdie with lightning speed. The author rises and steps back to evade him, but his black suit and polished shoes are unprepared for the youth in trainers, head wrapped like a ninja, a cyclone of anonymous fury.
    Rushdie bends and twists away but the knife is unrelenting, arm raising and falling over and over and over, evading the author’s hands and those attempting to intervene. The crowd gathered at a stage where civil discourse has been practiced for over 130 years, stands watching, frozen not with fear but with shock.
    After what seems like ages but I later learn was just seconds, the attacker is taken down by a few men and a state trooper. Rushdie and Reese have both fallen. Blood pools on the stage. A man runs by me, filming the chaos on his phone.

    Freedom in retreat

     

    “These are not good days for liberty. If you look around the world, you see that the idea of freedom, freedom which contains a sense of carefree-ness, seems everywhere in retreat, hounded by guns and bombs,” Mr. Rushdie told an audience at Emory University in 2015.
    How ironic, that his attacker moved through tree-lined streets where children run free until peals from a bell tower remind them it is time for dinner, where bicycles are not locked and wallets are often returned with cash intact. This is a place where people let down their guard, only too easily. That is part of the charm, but in the days to come, we will surely grapple with that.
    The crowd is mostly silent, except for the jagged cries some cannot, do not, still. The attacker is finally subdued, and the police dog stands over him. I wonder if it’s ghoulish to take a picture of the stage at this moment. But the ghoul is already here, I decide.
    Rushdie lies still on his back; someone has removed his shoes from his feet and lined them neatly beside him, waiting for him to fill them again. No one else can.
    I cannot get back on my bike for shaking, so I walk home. Sirens wail.
    By around noon, The New York Times has reported Rushdie was stabbed in the neck, with another witness saying he still had a pulse before he was airlifted to a hospital. I am astounded and relieved that he survived. When Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iran, issued a call for his death in 1989, the author went into hiding but continued to write his intricate and zany books.
    He says he must write to survive, or his dreams become increasingly crazy. Waiting for news, I wonder how much crazier a dream can get than this, more nightmare than a fairy tale.
    Texts pour in: “Are you there?” “Is it true?” A friend tells me she attended a dinner with Rushdie in February and remembers him saying he was fairly certain someone, somewhere, would get him. Who knew this could happen in this utopian summer community, which tries to combat the dissension in the world with conversation? Words were no match today.
    Later in the afternoon, Andrew Wylie, Rushdie’s agent, reports he is in surgery but has no other updates.
    DISCLAIMER: Independentghana.com will not be liable for any inaccuracies contained in this article. The views expressed in the article are solely those of the author(s) and do not reflect those of The Independent Ghana

  • Salman Rushdie: Iran blames writer and supporters for stabbing

    Instead of placing the blame on the author Salman Rushdie, Iran has “categorically” rejected any connection with the assailant.

    During a performance in New York, Mr. Rushdie, 75, was stabbed on stage and suffered serious injuries. He can now breathe on his own.

    Because of his 1988 book The Satanic Verses, he has endured years of death threats.

    Earlier, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken accused Iran’s state media of gloating about the attack, calling its behavior “despicable”.

    Iranian media have extensively commented on the attack, calling it “divine retribution”.

    Iran’s state broadcaster daily Jaam-e Jam highlighted the news that Rushdie might lose an eye following the attack, saying “an eye of the Satan has been blinded”.

    As news emerged of Friday’s attack, eyes turned to Tehran where the fatwa – religious edict – calling for the writer’s assassination was first issued more than three decades ago.

    But on Monday, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani Tehran “categorically” denied any link, adding “no one has the right to accuse the Islamic Republic of Iran”.

    However, he said freedom of speech did not justify Mr. Rushdie’s insulting religion in his writing.

    “In this attack, we do not consider anyone other than Salman Rushdie and his supporters worthy of blame and even condemnation,” the spokesman said during his weekly press conference in Tehran.

    “By insulting the sacred matters of Islam and crossing the red lines of more than 1.5 billion Muslims and all followers of the divine religions, Salman Rushdie has exposed himself to the anger and rage of the people.”

    Iran had no other information about Rushdie’s assailant except what has appeared in the media, he added.

    Mr. Blinken had earlier denounced Iran’s state institutions for inciting violence against the author.

    He said in a statement that Mr. Rushdie had “consistently stood up for the universal rights of freedom of expression, freedom of religion or belief, and freedom of the press”.

    “While law enforcement officials continue to investigate the attack, I am reminded of the pernicious forces that seek to undermine these rights, including through hate speech and incitement to violence.

    “Specifically, Iranian state institutions have incited violence against Rushdie for generations, and state-affiliated media recently gloated about the attempt on his life. This is despicable.”

    Mr. Blinken added the US and its partners would use “every appropriate tool” at their disposal to stand up to what he called “these threats”.

    On Sunday, Mr. Rushdie’s son said the author was still in a critical condition: “Though his life-changing injuries are severe, his usual feisty and defiant sense of humor remains intact,” he said.

    The family was “extremely relieved” when Mr. Rushdie was taken off a ventilator on Saturday, he said, adding that his father was able to “say a few words”.

    The author’s agent Andrew Wylie said the celebrated novelist suffered severed nerves in one arm, damage to his liver, and would likely lose an eye.

    The man charged over Friday’s attack – named Hadi Matar, aged 24 – has pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted murder and assault. He is accused of running onto the stage and stabbing Mr. Rushdie at least 10 times in the face, neck, and abdomen.

    The novelist was forced into hiding for nearly 10 years after The Satanic Verses was published in 1988. Many Muslims reacted with fury to it, arguing that the portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad was a grave insult to their faith.

    Mr. Rushdie faced death threats and the then-Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa – or decree – calling for Mr. Rushdie’s assassination, placing a $3m (£2.5m) bounty on the author’s head.

    The fatwa remains active, and although Iran’s government has distanced itself from Mr. Khomeini’s decree, a quasi-official Iranian religious foundation added a further $500,000 to the reward in 2012.